


The little goose girl

by Quillori



Category: Die Gänsemagd | The Goose Girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:08:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21966922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori
Summary: Sometimes a marriage is not the end of a tale.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	The little goose girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Angie13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angie13/gifts).



I wore a beautiful dress at my wedding, the silk as fine and light as feathers. There were jewels as well, set in bracelets and necklaces and rings and a girdle, heavy and dazzling, weighing me down like ropes, like a net. Afterwards, I looked at my husband and was amazed: this man, who had been a stranger to me, not much different from any other, was mine now, to care for and to keep, and I felt something new and unexpected, a sense of affection welling up inside me, bubbly and joyous as a forest spring. It was as though there was some magic in the ceremony, for all it seemed empty words to me, and this stranger, the prince, my husband, was marked out from the common run, made special and dear to me. 

I wanted to make him happy, both selflessly, for his own sake, and selfishly for mine, because I wanted to be as individual and precious to him as he had become to me, and I was not at all sure the ceremony would work the same magic to the same degree on him. I had not observed marriage generally guaranteed such feelings in human breasts, and if it had worked differently on me, there was no reason to suppose it would on him.

I think that is why I spoke to him so freely: I wanted to tell him things no one else could, to mark myself out as singular, irreplaceable. I could not be the only beautiful woman he saw, or the only one who cosseted him, attentive to his every desire. I could not be the only one to make him laugh, or to tease him, or to praise him. I could be the only one to tell him of the world outside his kingdom.

I took to telling him stories. At night, curled in his arms, or to pass an idle afternoon, or to sweeten his temper when his father would not listen to his counsel; whenever we were together I found myself talking, tale after tale, and after all, he seemed to take some pleasure in them.

Once upon a time, I told him, there was a powerful witch, who lived in a hut in a forest. It was a mean hut, badly made and badly kept, for although by her arts she had created servants to do her bidding, they were clumsy and ignorant. You may go out into the hen yard and take a hen, or the dog chained to the doorpost, or the mouse that lives in the eaves, and you may give it human form, but you cannot give it human thought, and therefore it cannot learn human skills.

So, there she was, living in the forest, when one day a handsome man rode by. He had been hunting with his comrades, but he had outstripped them and subsequently lost his way, so that he was quite alone. He meant only to ask her directions, but she made herself seem beautiful in his eyes, so that he dismounted and agreed to come into her hut, and accept food and drink at her hands. Afterwards, his companions found him, and he presented her to them and led her from the forest to become his wife. 

Or, as I told him once upon another time, there were seven sisters who lived all together in a palace atop the highest mountain in the world. Sometimes they would take the form of swans, and come down to the lakes to bathe their white feathers; sometimes they would take the form of geese and fly crying through the skies; sometimes they were the little brown wren that hides in a thicket; sometimes they were the hawk of cruel beak and slashing talon. But it is no good thinking you could have come upon them bathing and stolen their robe of feathers, for they were not enchanted, not mortal women who wore at times a different form. They were enchantment itself, they were the spirit of the lake, and the snow, and the old trees, and the bones of the earth. Nymphs, you might call them, clumsily and inaccurately, but I know of no better word in the speech of your people. Nymphs, or demigoddesses, or nature spirits, or just the things that live on the high mountain.

There was an old king, who did not desire to be old. He had three sons (it is often that way), and having only one kingdom, he promised it to the son who could restore his youth. The oldest son was a warrior, strong and bold, and he went forth for a year and a day, taking always the hardest road, and asking along the way for that which could make an old man young. But he could find no answer.

The middle son had little time for fighting, or for discomfort of any sort, but he had an agile mind, and if he had not been the son of a king he would have made a fine merchant, shrewd and calculating. For a year and a day he sent forth messengers to every man of learning, asking their advice, and likewise servants to every marketplace, offering to buy. But he too could find no answer.

The youngest son was very handsome, but he was the youngest and did not see how he could surpass his elders. “What can I do,” he asked his wife plaintively. “I am not so strong and brave as the one, nor as clever as the other. If they can find no answer, surely it is beyond me.”

“Go to sleep,” said his wife, “and do not trouble yourself, for the morning is wiser than the night, and something will come to you.” So he slept peacefully, and his wife thought to herself of many things. She thought of an old story, where a clever woman tricks an ageing king, killing first a sheep and then a dog, and plunging their bodies in a cauldron, from which there seems to spring a lamb, a puppy, so that the king agrees to be killed and boiled in the cauldron, believing that he too will emerge as a stripling. Which of course he does not. 

But most kings are not quite such fools, and besides there were her husband's two brothers, who would surely object. But the wife was a powerful witch, and she conceived of a spell that would give the king back his youth, although only for a little while. So she rose early, before the sun’s light had returned, and she went out from the palace and into the woods, and first thing she came upon was a flock of geese. “Oh geese,” she said. “Honoured and respected geese, I am a servant before you, who begs a favour you will surely grant. Lend me a little of the strength of your wings, so that I may make a charm of it that will give an old man back his youth, even if only for a day. Certainly I shall pay you back, and also I shall always stand your protector, and when my husband is king, there shall be no more eating of geese anywhere on his lands.”

But the geese were reluctant, for they had heard tales of her, and they did not believe her promises. They had seen hens and dogs and mice, and many other such creatures, labouring ceaselessly without reward, and they did not wish the same fate to befall them. It was a long time she argued, and begged, and cajoled, until finally she offered them as surety her first born child, swearing by the strongest oaths she knew that the child would be theirs if she did not keep her faith.

And so it came to pass that the youngest son led his wife before the king, and she pronounced a charm that caused the years to fall away, and the strength of youth to return to his body. Overjoyed, he blessed his son for his clever wife, and declared him at once his heir. Nor could the other sons argue, for it was clear to all that the youngest had succeeded where they had not. One year later, and a day, the king felt suddenly faint and tired, and sat down upon a sofa to rest, from which he never arose, his strength running suddenly from his body like sand from a broken hourglass. And his youngest son became king.

Once upon a time there was a queen who had one child, a daughter. She guarded her daughter well, keeping her from spinning wheels and deep wells and open meadows, and binding enchantments round her always, so that nothing could harm her. It was said that the queen owed a debt she did not wish to repay.

Once upon a time, there was a young man whose mother had no more food to feed herself or her family. “Do not fear,” the young man said, “for I will find work and then you will want for nothing.” At first he had no luck, for the neighbouring farms had sons of their own, and no need to pay another to do their work. Likewise when he came to the first town, he found there was no shortage of young men there before him, and they mocked him for being the son of a peasant. And the second town, although larger than the first, had a still larger number of youths, and they threw stones at him, because he dared to walk among them when he was a peasant from the countryside. The third town was larger again, and they would not even let him enter it if he had no trade.

So he walked on, and at last he came to the king’s palace, and the king himself was riding out to hunt, and saw him, and asked why he had come. The young man hardly dared speak, for he had not been good enough for any of the towns along the way, and this was the king, but he must do as he was commanded, so he said he was seeking work to support his mother, but no one wanted him for he knew only farmwork, and the farms had enough labourers already. Because he was a good looking young man, the king made him a messenger, and sent him always here and there about the king’s business. In this way he saw a great deal of the kingdom, and in time beyond its borders as well, for the king desired a suitable wife for his son, and naturally sent his best looking messenger to bear his request. 

The first kingdom the messenger came upon had was poor and war-torn, so he continued on. The second was at peace with its neighbours, but only because it had nothing they could envy. The third however was rich and strong. Its market-place bustled with wealthy merchants, the towers of its castle stood proud and straight, its fields were golden with the waiting harvest. Only the servants in the royal palace were at fault, strangely slow and clumsy, as though they did not quite understand what they were to do, or what was said to them. But this he noticed only as he was leaving, having already delivered his message.

Once upon a time there was a powerful witch, who wished her daughter to marry a prince. She bound all creatures to the service of her daughter, so that her daughter should want for nothing. But the witch owed a great debt, and that debt created a flaw in her spells, so that her daughter stumbled, and fell, and found herself bound to serve, her place taken by one of her former slaves, and all continued on as the witch had intended, but with the wrong woman in each role.

There is a story about a man who had a little grey cat, and the little cat loved him so well it became a woman to please him, and they were married and lived happily. But one day a mouse ran across the bedroom, and the wife leapt for it, and became a cat again, because you cannot make one type of thing into another. I would like to think this story isn’t true. I would like to think my own story has reached its happy ending, the heroine freed from her enchanted slavery, and married to the handsome prince. But the prince’s eyes stray from me to other pretty girls, some prettier than I, and all more human. There are spells that would recall his thoughts, bind his heart only to me, but spells are human things, and I cannot learn the art. There is a pretty servant girl, out amongst the geese, and a pretty goose in his bed, pretending that things will end well.


End file.
